This page is included on GUADEC/HowTo/Sponsors and GnomeAsia/How to Organize GNOME.Asia Summit

The GUADEC and GNOME.Asia organising teams must coordinate with the board to update and improve the Sponsors Brochure at the start of each year.

The earlier you start contacting potential sponsors the bigger your chances are of getting more funds and early pays. Sponsors tend to budget their participation in events during October/November the year before. You might find exceptions if you are lucky. For instance, Advisory Board companies used to reserve some money for next GUADEC.

Finding early sponsors is rewarding for everybody: they get a larger period of visibility in the GNOME community, you get a better worse case scenario with some income in your budget. Also, the machinery of invoicing, logo & blurb hunt and approval of marketing materials starts earlier and can therefore finish earlier.

With the sponsors there is a core rule: make them excited about your conference, make them happy to be part of it. GNOME sponsors are clever and they know (or can know if they want) what is really going on with the conference. So your only way of getting them really excited about GUADEC/GNOME.Asia is… organizing an exciting event.

Consider the above as a useful quality check. Almost everybody would understand that you make mistakes without having money. Almost nobody will understand that you are making mistakes when you have money.

Combined sponsorship between conferences

Discount sponsorship packages for GUADEC and GNOME.Asiaare sometimes arranged by the Foundation board, sometimes by the GNOME.Asia organisers and sometimes by GUADEC organisers. As a rule of thumb, this sponsorship should be split proportionately between GUADEC and GNOME.Asia based on what individual sponsorship for each conference costs.

For example, if GUADEC sponsorship is $10,000 while GNOME.Asia sponsorship is $5,000, then combined sponsorship of $12,000 should be assumed to be split such that GUADEC would be assigned $8,000 while GNOME.Asia would be assigned $4,000. If either conference needs more or less, then it can be negotiated between the two conference organisers with the Foundation Board moderating.

Responsibilities for contacting sponsors

You should create a list of potential sponsors when you start planning, and coordinate with the Foundation Board about who will approach whom. Note that you may want to approach certain companies to ask for sponsorship for both GUADEC and GNOME.Asia.